Creative Marketing Ideas from The OLX Group Companies That Make the Future of Trade Happen
When you see marketing excellence, you know it. It powerfully blends art and science, using data to craft stories and build connections.
Across all our brands at OLX Group, the diversity of the marketing experiences always amaze us. These marketing experiences have the power to stir up emotions and stay in our minds for a long time. They are holistic experiences that create memories.
We’d like to highlight recent successful marketing experiences at OLX Group, and how they’re helping OLX Group drive the future of trade. For this series, we chose a few for you across all our brands in more than 30 countries. For each experience, we’ll discuss the key takeaway and marketing insights.
OLX Autos Indonesia Campaign: The First Step
The Takeaway: Neither art nor science should take precedence in the modern marketing mix. Neither is past or future.
Watch the OLX Autos Indonesia one-year anniversary video. The mini-film is titled #LangkahPertama, which means “first step.”
OLX Autos Indonesia, for example, recently celebrated its one-year anniversary. The company ran a stunning campaign, telling the story of a father and a son — and a car that connected them. The story creatively covered childhood memories, taking the first steps, respect, and hope.
The story begins with a man and his elderly father talking about getting together. They set a date, July 7th. The camera then zooms in on a photo of the man as a child, with his father. They’re standing by a blue car.
The story then flashes back to that childhood moment, with the father and son bonding over the blue car. The father drives his son to school, and they celebrate the son’s birthday in the car, sharing a piece of cake.
Next, the story flashes back to the son as an adult. The son decides to fix and renovate the same car through OLX Autos. Using the OLX Autos app to facilitate the car deal goes smoothly for the son.
Five weeks later, the father arrives to see his son. The son surprises his father with the car, and tells him he’ll never sell it. The son hands his dad the keys, and they set out for a ride. The story ends with the son and father celebrating the father’s birthday in the car.
The father-son video has the power to make you smile and cry. The story shows that OLX Autos is more than just buying and selling used cars. The platform makes the car shopping process easy, creates unforgettable experiences, helps people connect, and enables you to find your dream car.
OLX Indonesia’s Head of Marketing, Sandy Maulana, sums up the goal of such campaigns well, saying, “This #StepFirst momentum is a milestone to continue to innovate in providing comfort and peace of mind for every customer,” as OLX Autos makes finding your dream car convenient and memorable.
Key Takeaways
Neither art nor science should take precedence in the modern marketing mix
Such content perfectly embodies what marketing should do: Blend art and science to inspire folks to action. Neither art nor science should take precedence in the modern marketing mix. Neither is past or future. To prosper in business today, brands need a balanced diet of tradition and technology, right brain and left.
By using art and science, creative marketing at OLX Autos builds connections with users and improves experiences, helping to fulfill the OLX mission: To shape the future of trade to unlock the hidden value of everything.
Courting customers is like online dating
A Harvard Business Review article describes what the OLX Autos marketing team did through the #LangkahPertama mini-film. As the article states, “Courting customers is just like online dating.” Brands must make themselves the perfect match if they want customers to take that first step. The mini-film does that by positioning the platform as a tool to help people make important connections and take the first step towards owning a dream car.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the ‘online dating’ metaphor applies even more to marketing. As Ewa, Business Analytics Team Leader at OLX , states,
“With COVID, we’ve had to accelerate what we do online as the shopper has moved there. We’ve had to show we’re the right match more through digital channels.”
OLX Brasil Campaign: Reinventing a Habit
The Takeaway: OLX Brasil — Where habits are reinvented & a more conscious, intelligent form of consumption emerges
OLX Brasil has launched a marketing initiative to reinvent how people consume and save. As part of this initiative, the marketing department did a test, asking adults and children to choose between old and new products.
In the video, you’ll see that more children opt for used products. Each child logically explains why the used product is the better option. Beyond this choice, there’s a deeper lesson: the benefits of used items and a circular economy (not a throwaway one).
As the OLX Brasil marketing team attests, “Why buy a new item when you find a used one at half price? Rethinking the possibilities is up to you. Let go of prejudice, get attached to the advantages of buying used items and count on OLX to help you in this process!”
Patrícia Tauscheck, Marketing Director at OLX Brasil, expands on this idea and emphasizes the importance of building better values.
“At OLX Group, products with resale potential gain relevance and consumers find in second-hand items an important alternative in the domestic economy. At this moment, we understand that we can reinforce the importance of this market, encouraging a more conscious and intelligent form of consumption.”
Nathalia Arcuri, a personal finance expert, even joined OLX Group to help with creating the campaign and writing an ebook. The ebook is designed to help everyday people save money, improve the quality of their life, and conserve resources (which benefits the environment and society).
Through the educational campaign, OLX Brasil creatively displays the financial, social, and environmental value of buying used items. And they show how the everyday consumer is integral to building an ethical, smart economy.
Key Takeaways
Campaigns should unlock different value elements for customers
When customers evaluate a product or service, they weigh its perceived value against the price. It is fairly easy for marketers to understand and analyze how consumers think about the price side of the equation. But understanding what consumers truly value and why is much more complicated. According to an HBR article “Elements of Value” actually span four categories: functional, emotional, life changing, and social impact. Companies that deliver multiple Elements of Value experience better business performance. This framework enables firms to redefine competition within their business sector.
The Reinventing a Habit campaign is doing actually this. When combined, the Elements of Value create compelling value propositions that elevate products and services above commodity status.
By giving items a second life, OLX Brasil has not only helped folks save money and improve their quality of life, we’ve also saved:
- 5.5 billion kilograms of material
- 481 million cubic meters of water
- 59 million tons of CO2 emissions (OLX Group is carbon neutral)
Our Associate Director of Product, Dealer Experiences at OLX Autos, sums up the overall message here well:
“OLX Group saves the planet. This is where we build a platform where we enable re-use. People reuse resources and this reduces the carbon footprint. This saves the planet from resource depletion.”
Storia Campaign: The Romanian-style ‘Hygge’
The Takeaway: Storia — Where comfort & coziness are delivered, & new words are invented; The full, business-growing power of the marketing function comes way upstream — from creating markets.
Storia, the go-to platform for real estate in Romania, ran a campaign to find the Romanian word for Hygge. Hygge is a Danish concept of coziness and comfort at home. It’s about wellbeing, and intimacy. To visualize it, think about drinking hot chocolate by the fireplace.
Since COVID-19 has necessitated that we all spend more time at home, the Storia marketing team recognized the importance of comfort and coziness at home. So, they decided to ask Romanians, “What makes you comfortable and cozy at home?”
- 42% of respondents said the presence of another person contributed to happiness in the home.
- 37% of folks said drinking tea makes them comfortable at home.
- 20% of people associated the sound of rain at the window with feeling cozy at home.
- 67% of people used the word “peace” to describe wellbeing at home, with other words like “joy” and “ease” being common.
Following this, the marketing team at Storia set out to create the Romanian word for Hygge — seeing a need for their own term. They made this video, which follows a man from Denmark’s move to Bucharest.
The man is on the quest to find the perfect apartment, seeking to find Hygge. He meets a local friend. To help his friend understand Hygge, the man gives plenty of examples, describing Hygge as a “warm, fuzzy feeling that makes you excited to be home.” The story then dives into what the Romanian term for Hygge should be. The two actors show why this is so complicated, and then ask the viewers to invent the word.
To help with inventing a word for Hygge, Storia turned to two creative writers, Iulian Tănase and Iv Cel Naiv, to help with the task. The diversity and breadth of Hygge’s meaning made it tough to come up with the perfect translation at first. Watch this video to discover the creative process of inventing a new word:
As Iulian Tănase said, you feel Hygge when you’re “with the kids” or “laying around and watching a movie.” More specifically, Hygge is a moment where there’s “inner peace taking place” and your mind goes home.
Expanding on that, Iv Cel Naiv stated that “there’s so much to say” about Hygge. Therefore, the new word “should be about at least two things” and ideally three or four.
With all that in mind, the two creative writers invented the Romanian word for hygge:
A combination of nice and quiet, Biniste is about a positive state of mind and the ability of a space to create peace. In Romania, every apartment or house needs Biniste — because that’s how you feel at ease, comfortable, and happy in your home.
For Storia, the marketing campaign held an overarching business purpose: To prove Storia is the platform where users can find their dream home, a place where they’ll have Biniste. The story of inventing the word displayed a commitment to helping Romanians improve their wellbeing at home.
Key Takeaways
Innovation needs marketing
Too often, we think of marketing in the context of acquiring and retaining customers. Yet Storia’s creative campaign shows marketing excellence is not only a part of innovation, but it’s also a driver of innovation.
By creating the word Biniste, Storia has identified the central need of home shoppers and has delivered value to the Romanian real estate market. Storia recognized the need for Hygge in Romania, especially as the pandemic has kept us in more than ever before. They’ve shown their users that Storia is where you find Hygge — or Biniste.
As you can, innovation and marketing are intertwined. A Harvard Business Review article expands on this idea, stating that “understanding people’s fundamental needs and drivers, identifying customers, and developing the entire go-to-market and usage ecosystem are the essential aspects of marketing — and the ones that the success of innovations, especially breakthrough ones, hinge upon.”
A robust marketing trend analysis reveals the cultural, social, and psychological dynamics that should be addressed in the development of and communication about an innovative product.
Great innovation and great marketing go hand in hand. The Storia campaign is proof of that.
Here are some of the awards the campaign received:
- Best campaign in the Balkans, EMEA Sabre Awards (International PR competition)
- Best campaign in Crowdsourcing & Co-creating, EMEA Sabre Awards (International PR competition)
- Best Consumer PR campaign for an existing product, IPRA Golden World Awards (International PR competition)
- Gold in the Engaged Community category — Stevie Awards 2021 (International business competition)
- Gold for Communications or PR Campaign of the Year — Community Engagement — Stevie Awards (International business competition)
- Bronze in the Interactive & Mobile category, ADCE Festival (European advertising festival)
OLX Poland Campaign: Pay & Ship Launch
The Takeaway: OLX Poland — Where you choose the way you buy & sell; We’re competing with the last best experience our customers had.
In an interview with Corina, OLX’s Head of Product at Pay & Ship, we learned how the Pay & Ship solution can remove the worry for OLX’s buyers and sellers. Since Pay & Ship empowers users the way they trust most, the solution enables us to unlock “the potential of making successful trade with peace of mind,” Corina says.
To increase awareness of Pay & Ship, OLX Poland launched an entertaining marketing experience. It even included a video advertisement featuring Janusz Chabior, a famous Polish actor. See for yourself:
The Pay & Ship service works for nearly every category, from home and garden to sports and hobbies. For the campaign, the heroes of the other clips, just like the playful video above, travel around Poland to personally pick up purchases. They have their reasons for driving to get their packages. They wish to make new friends, get their child to sleep while driving, or pursue their passions.
“Our service has never wanted to impose anything on anyone, so this time we tell a story that everyone has a choice and if they want to travel kilometers to pick up their dream item while observing the cranes, that’s great. But it will also be great if they order an item to a parcel locker. As in all good stories, we leave the audience with a punchline, this time delivered by the invaluable Janusz Chabior,” informs Marcin Sienkowski, Head of Marketing at OLX.
In the end, the message is clear: OLX Pay & Ship allows you to transact in the way you feel most comfortable and enjoyable.
Key Takeaways
You must deliver the best customer experience ever
The magic of OLX Poland’s Pay & Ship campaign is that it recognizes we aren’t exactly competing with other e-commerce players. As a recent Harvard Business Review piece suggests, we’re competing with the last best experience our customers had.
This necessitates using data to deliver personalized experiences across the entire customer journey. The Pay & Ship powerfully shows how data can be used in storytelling. The team takes pain points of buying or selling items online — and then shows how Pay & Ship solves those pain points through a humorous video. It’s marketing brilliance. When the coronavirus hit, digital transformation accelerated overnight. This, in turn, sent consumer expectations skyrocketing in terms of what companies could do for them with a more digital experience.
Marketing excellence and the future of trade
At OLX Group, marketing teams across all our brands and countries are doing great, unique work. They’re at the cutting-edge of creative marketing, helping to fuel the future of trade with the right mix of art and science.
Our marketing teams recognize the value of data analytics, automation, AI and other technologies. But they’re going above and beyond with those tools, using the findings and insights to take storytelling to a whole new level. An HBR article echoes this idea:
“We must use data as the fuel yet respect the craft of storytelling to drive meaningful human connections. We must tread a fine line between brand marketing and performance marketing, recognizing that we currently have a bias toward what we can readily quantify. And we must understand what should be centralized and what should be bespoke, identifying where consistency helps and where it hinders.”
At OLX Group, our marketing teams and other departments are hard at work building the future of trade, creating scalable yet customized solutions for our users. We have a similar approach for our internal work environment.
Our team members have lots of opportunities for room and growth, and can shape their career the way they see fit. If you’d like to be a part of our team, and help create excellent work like our marketing campaigns, click the link below to check out our job openings.
